Fantasia Videogame Announced By Disney and Harmonix

Fantasia is a weird, beautiful celebration of art and music, and the most experimental feature that Disney has ever made. Soon it’ll also be a videogame—again.

Today Disney Interactive and Harmonix Music Systems announced Fantasia: Music Evolved, a motion-based rhythm game inspired by Fantasia. The game will be released in 2014 and will be playable with the Kinect motion sensor on the Xbox One and Xbox 360. And although players will manipulate music in the game, this Fantasia will sound a little bit different.

Instead of the all-classical format of the 1940 film and its 2000 sequel, Fantasia: Music Evolved will feature popular music by “over 25 leading artists”, including Queen, Bruno Mars, Fun, Kimbra and AVICII. A Harmonix spokesperson has confirmed that classical pieces will also be featured in the game, but that those specific details will be revealed at a later date.

In Fantasia: Music Evolved you control the sorcerer Yen Sid’s new apprentice, performing and manipulating the game’s soundtrack with rhythmic gestures. In other words, you wave your hands in the air. Sounds also react to the game’s environment, which you can also manipulate. Early artwork indicates levels based on a printing press and an underwater tableaux, and there’s no word yet if any of the vignettes from either Fantasia film will be revisited.

Harmonix has a stellar track record with both music games and the Kinect (they developed the Rock Band and Dance Central games) so if anybody can make a motion-controlled Top 40 Fantasia game work it’s probably them.

Paste contributor Joe Bernardi will take a deeper look at Fantasia: Music Evolved in this afternoon’s digital issue of Paste.

In the meantime, here’s a trailer for Music Evolved and a few screenshots.